The State of Labor and Labor for the State: Syrian and Egyptian Cinema beyond the 2011

Uprisings
Kay Dickinson
On April 8, 2011, swift on the heels of several Arab insurrections and very much in the midst of others, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued an economic assessment of the region. Given the prior strong overall growth of countries like Egypt and Tunisia, the orga nization confessed it had been caught somewhat unawares by this turn of events. Wealth, it admitted, could no longer be judged at averaged- out mathematical face value: The IMF should have paid more attention to the distribution of income, not just aggregate results ... [it will] begin incorporating more data on unemployment and inequality into its analysis.1 The eyes of leftist observers might roll here; some told you sos over the inadequacy and callousness of neoliberal doctrines of accounting would not be unwarranted. But, beyond such easy, reactive rejoinders, the fact remains that work and wealth allocation have strongly affected the contours of each Arab communitys commitments to revolutionary change, and will continue to do so. Their diverse responses to unemployment and inequality, the kinds that have been negligently sidelined within the IMFs factorings, will serve as a starting point for the following argument. The media industries lie rmly implanted within the lived experience of the uprisings and their provocations. Furthermore, as most commentators observe, the media have proven pivotal to the demands for change, certainly by transmitting recorded incitements to and distributable documents of protest, but also, as I argue here, because as places of work, the media are vigorously shaped by the very same gurings of nancial and labor inegality to which the IMF belatedly alert us. A thorough understanding of these relationships, I contest, must tackle the tight political and economic bonds between the state and the media industries in the Arab world. The ght for fair employment
Framework 53, No. 1, Spring 2012, pp. 99116. Copyright 2012 Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201-1309.

Kay Dickinson rights (class struggle, ultimately) has long been waged in front of the camera and behind it; revolution is far from an unfamiliar concept in these spaces, although previous de nitions may not conform to todays incarnations. Darting between Syrian and Egyptian history, this article assumes a comparative demeanor in order to highlight, sometimes through jarring juxtaposition, the repercussions of these countries dissimilar labor policies. More particularly, a to-and-fro between their very different national movie industries allows for a tracing out of the relativity of antigovernmental rebellions. Doing so can also unearth paradigms for circumventing some of the insufferable conditions that prompted them and that the IMF has so damagingly overlooked. I have specically selected these two nation-states because they once shared a commitment to Arab socialism and now unite in outwardly similar antiautocratic revolution. However, their routes from the former to the latter markedly digress due to divergent choices over economic governance that raise an abundance of questions about, and perhaps even answers to how, unemployment and inequal ity might best be abated. The analysis below concentrates more lingeringly on Syria, precisely because Syria has sought to spurn the types of economic dogma insisted upon by the IMF. My prioritization therefore allows for a prolonged engagement with Syrias conceptualizations of labor, wealth, value, and freedom. Such postulates have much to offer a critique of the capitalist actualities that dominate throughout the world, including in Egypta country that has been unsuccessfully attempting to make good through IMF structural adjustment programs since 1991. There is one fundamental disparity: Egypts unrest in 2011 sprung dramatically from a groundswell of labor activism; Syrias not so declaredly. Syrians have pitted themselves much more singularly against their entrenched ruling dictatorship. Undoubtedly, as the Western press have euphorically reported (and its humanities academics eagerly absorbed), Egypts upper middle classes were mobilized via social media like Twitter and Facebook. But the poorer demonstrators, the majority, were more likely politicized into action in sympathy for or by involvement in the nineteen hundred or so industrial actions of the last seven years. These strikes and sit-ins have been almost exclusively deemed illegal; they were met with brutal governmental and extrajudicial suppression that has not stopped short of intimidation, torture, even murder.2 And, just as industrial dispute protrudes less into the Syrian revolt, so too do the privatized media and telecommunications networks take a backseat (for reasons explained below). The two nation-states have not always operated at such variance and, for this reason, I pay closest attention to how they drifted away from each other. At such a juncture, it is easiest to assess how fairly recent modications in labor culture have dramatically altered social reality. In the mid-twentieth century, Egypt and Syria were governed according to closely allied uptakes of Arab socialism and they even briey merged into one nation-state, the United Arab Republic, between 1958 and 1961. Their ideologies were fervently

100

Syrian and Egyptian Cinema promoted through movies and, what is more, their lm industries fully assimilated the regimes leftist aspirations for full citizen employment into their infrastructural designs. According to a number of economic indicators, they still appear fairly alike. Mean wages are comparable, with Syrias ($2.61/hour) slightly higher than Egypts ($2.45/hour), and the same goes for unemployment (9.2 percent and 9.7 percent, respectively). But one stark and highly illuminating difference exists, whose grounds become clear herein: 20 percent of Egypts population is considered below the poverty line against Syrias less-perturbing 11.9 percent.3 It comes as little surprise, then, that remonstration against uneven distribution of wealth features more prominently in the Egyptian protesters demands than it does for the Syrians. On both sides, and most probably because of the socialist legacy, income iniquity has proven a persistent and popu lar lm narrative propeller. Debates about social equality drive the plots of Syrian movies, whether they deal with the rights of the urban poor, as in The Extras (Nabil al-Maleh, 1993); rural citizens, Al Lajat (Riad Shaya, 1995); domestic abuse sufferers, Dreams of the City (Mohammad Malas, 1985); or refugees, Something Is Burning (Ghassan Shmeit, 1993). Syrian director Mohammad Malas reveals, When we started our life in cinema, we had many, many hopes of making something of our society. We dreamt that culture and cinema could bring about change in our society, our lives and our relationships with power.4 This essay could never hope to encompass the ubiquitous representation of class con ict within Egypts prolic, thousandsstrong cinematic output. Instead, I stress how it pays well to focus attention on discrepancies between the labor rights of each country offscreenthose afforded to lm and non lm workers alike. This, in turn, leads to an understanding of how the resulting aesthetics become politicized, how both labor rights and internationalist solidarity mark these texts. With the service sector on the rise, employing 67 percent of Syrias workforce and 51 percent of Egypts, analysis of arenas like the lm industry can prove educative for an appreciation of how to foster fair vocational relations.5 In this respect, Syrian cinema, as elaborated below, stands out as highly exceptional in its conductexemplary, perhapseven as it enters an uncertain future that may well render its practices untenable. But rst it is necessary to set the scene for the two industries, zooming out to take in their strategic positions amid a larger political picture. Casting wider for context can also bring forth means of comprehending how militaristic despotism has held sway for more than half a century. Rigidly, ambitiously planned economies that amalgamated cinematic production launched these regimes. Upon his accession to power, President Nassers nationalization drive for Egypt was perhaps somewhat more day-to-day and on the hoof than Syrias. Syrias Bathism, by contrast, had been thoroughly systematized in the 1940s by its founding gures, Michel Aaq and Salah al-Din Bitar. The motivations for folding moviemaking into the public sector can be found in

101

Kay Dickinson the original Bath Constitution, which expressly mentions cinema, deems intellectual work the most sacred type, and insists that the state must protect and encourage intellectuals.6 Regardless of the degree of prior forethought, however, pan-Arab socialist principles coincided across the two countries, taking the form of state ownership and planned production, limited private landholding with little scope for turning prot, state provision (free health care, education, pensions and the like, and heavy subsidies for essentials like wheat and fuel), unionized and protected labor, equal rights for women, and an energetic anticolonial regionalism. True to these ideals, from the mid-1960s onward, Syrias command economy assumed whole or majority control of most of the countrys main industries and banks, with three-quarters of the gross domestic product (GDP) eventually nationalized as part of its inqilab (profound transformation) initiatives.7 Filmmaking played its minor part here. The year 1963 saw the inauguration of the Syrian National Film Orga nization (NFO), a wing of the Ministry of Culture, which busily administered production, distribution, and the import and export of lm goods.8 In 1969, the NFO was awarded the exclusive rights to all these activities, crowding out private enterprise with its monopoly status and striving toward a vertically integrated, protectionist schema. In this way, the NFO could stand up to the pressurizing tactics of the movie multinationals and also foster a brand of cinema dedicated to socialist themes and structures of labor. Jobs were assured for a group of directors who had been hand selected to attend lm school in communist Eastern Europe, a guarantee practically unheard of elsewhere in the world. Rare too is the idea that lms might exist and circulate under terms other than those of consumerism. Cinema is culture and culture is not supposed to make monetary gain, opines Nidal al-Debs, one of these lmmakers. 9 Mohammad Malas, another NFO director, points to the synchronization of this viewpoint with the realities of productionWe make lms without any commercial pressure10 a precondition that powerfully shapes the working lives of those in the sector. Unlike the nationalized movie industries of most previously socialist countries, Syrian public-sector cinema still exists, albeit just barely. For many, it is now an underfunded and lazy bureaucracy, losing out to the transregional success of Syrian television serials and threatened by Syrias recent tentative steps toward the global free market economy and, more recently, the open animosity toward the ruling Bathist regime. Nevertheless, I argue that the NFO still serves an important function as an example of how to imagine a manufacture and distribution of culture that departs from exploitative capitalist norms, and how media production can play a role in the prevention of unemployment and inequality. Parallel developments were afoot in Egypt throughout the 1960s. Nassers presidency cleared the path for the nationalization of all foreign businesses and most large- and medium-scale Egyptian enterprises, including cinema. In 1960, the countrys lm studios were expropriated by the state, as

102

Syrian and Egyptian Cinema were a third of the movie theatres, although a private cinema sector was allowed to run alongside these throughout much of this period in both countries. During the years that followed, most aspects of lm production were laid out and strategized from within government agencies. Meantime, across the Egyptian public sector at large, workers were promised job security, subsidized food and housing, pensions, and a one-third increase in wages, alongside a 10 percent decrease in working hours.11 Filmmaking staff were retained on permanent state salaries. Accordingly, the insecurities of package unit production did not threaten the Egyptian lm industry, which functioned pretty much in line with a more classic Fordist model. Then came the moment when Syria and Egypt parted ways, the moment we might cite as fundamental to dening the different characters of their lm industries and revolutions. The Egyptian tide turned soon after Anwar Sadat came to power. Sadat digressed from Nassers dream of a centralized economy, making way for the intah (open door) period of 1974 onward, with its encouragement of private enterprise, exible labor markets, and ultimately the sale of public assets. Egypt, at this juncture, slipped back into a less even distribution of income, backtracking on the aspiration for full employment.12 In 1971, the lm industry was reprivatized. The states careful investments now ultimately beneted only the limited few rich nanciers who were able to buy them up. When the price of oil dipped in the 1980s, the Egyptian economy was forced to absorb unanticipated knocks, affecting the ow of remittance into the country from the Gulf as well as the local (and fairly meager) oil market. By the mid-1980s, Egypts balance of payments betrayed how unsustainable their external debts were, prompting an IMF intervention in 1991. The government bore the brunt of the IMFs dictates, having single-mindedly concentrated for years on infrastructure (education, utilities, and so on) rather than export productivity. The IMFs structural adjustment programs insisted, among other things, upon the scaling back not only of public-sector employment but also of job protection and benets, particularly in areas where cost efciencyas an almost sole term of evaluationwas seen to be wanting.13 Publicly owned concerns would either have to prove themselves protable or be sold in order to help pay off the debts, a policy still in force throughout Mubaraks reign. Certainly, many who lived through the switch-over period testify that lm productions overshot their deadlines and budgets. Unfortunately, a pervasive devil-may-care attitude to splashing government cash had become something of a norm. According to the new methods of accounting, millions had been lost through mismanagement. When such inscriptions of cinemas worth are compared to Syrias, we can begin to confront the neoliberal concept of culture advanced by the IMF and fostered within Egypt, along with the responsibility its logic must assume in Egyptian worker discontent. Syria has stayed more in check of what it owes, which weighs in at 32.3 percent of its current GDP, as against Egypts shocking 80.5 percent. Thus,

103

Kay Dickinson while Egypt has appeared richer according to certain models of accounting (a 5.3 percent GDP growth rate, beating Syrias 2.2 percent), external debt has indubitably taken its toll.14 Syria, unlike Egypt, has managed its loans without equivalent IMF intercession. Its par tic u lar relationship with its lenders chiey erstwhile Comecon nations, especially what is now Russia has also colored Syrian cinemas formation, both infrastructural and stylistic. Reecting on the history that underpins Syrias borrowing recalls a united journey through political af liation into lm training and therefore, fairly logically, into aesthetics. The majority of the NFOs employees were schooled in Moscow, Kiev, or Prague, dispatched on government scholarships or traveling of their own accord. This connection, in turn, can still point to ways of guring ownership that defy those espoused, at this point, within Egypt just as much as almost everywhere else. The look and sound of these lms, I argue, insist upon an understanding of property that contradicts the insistences of bodies like the IMF. Credit, ultimately, is more than nancial, but need not be thought through in accordance with dominant economic principles. Precious little is written in English on Syrian movies, but what does exist seeks to categorize it textually by remarking on its parallel debt to Eastern European idioms. Richard Pena observes how Syrian lms are ne exemplars of the VGIK [Moscows All-Union State Institute of Cinematography] style, an approach that opts for carefully composed, almost iconographic shotsthe opposite perhaps of the more uid, hand-held style adopted widely after the explosion of the French New Wave.15 A hunt for analogy might also have tracked down The Leopard (Nabil al-Maleh, 1972) with its striking Eisensteinian crosscuts between victory parties to mark the end of World War II and peasants brutalized by Syrian soldiers on French salaries. There is also The Extras, with its afnity for the bleak comedy, the surrealism, and the preoccupation with menacing bureaucracies to be found in Kafka and the Czech New Wave, among whom its director had trained in Prague. Or Nights of the Jackal s (Abdullatif Abdulhamid, 1989) quotation of the Soviet coproduction I Am Cuba (Mikhail Kalatozov, SU/CU, 1964), which sees Abu Kamal setting re to his wheat crop rather than have it captured by the Israeli forces threatening Syrias borders. But is this stylistic plagiarism? The fact of intercultural trafc need not always stimulate the laying and limiting of claims on aesthetic assets. Penas comment brings to light a par ticu lar geography of education, which is key to unlocking some of the complexities of anticapitalist forms of creativity that challenge the Egypt governments (and much of the worlds) appetite for privatization. Writers like him also need to be cautious of how a formalist teleology, the forging of a chain of inuence, would edge toward a client-state model of innovation and derivativeness, something that could severely restrict how these lms might be motivated, interpreted, or could function dynamically within present-day analysis. Concentrating on replication when reading these sequences would imply a politics of ownership

104

Syrian and Egyptian Cinema that severely curtails the political potential of how Syrian lms operate. It is limiting to ignore these movies and their circuits par ticu lar concepts of property, ones in keeping with broader public ownership ideals. In short, the overlaps in these projects compellingly insist that culture can be thought of, and can function, outside and in opposition to the ambits of private property, ideals that Egypt has very much enforced over the last twenty years and resistance to which has fueled the current protests. NFO output demands an interrogation of novelty as a value within marketplace demarcation. Scholarly and technical expertise, aesthetic registers, common aspirations for nationalization, universal education, and social betterment of a par ticu lar ideological persuasion all need to be taken into consideration. The logistics of their development and the casting of various roles in these tasks hold up for scrutiny the typical investment of inuence with dubious notions of cultural or intellectual property. Solidarity might be a better term for all this; Mette Hjorts af nitive transnationalism another.16 Syrian society is currently playing an anxious waiting game with the capitalist concept of the asset. While counterfeit products and state holdings are both the norm, it is only a matter of time before the World Intellectual Property Orga nization, which Syria joined in 2004, will make its presence more vehemently felt. Whatever lies on Syrias horizon, it still serves to read these lmmakers as translators of pertinent political ideals rather than imitators. The act of translation strives to transmit otherwise obscure knowledge, and communism can perhaps be de ned as such since 1989. At the same time, translation is always also the delicate conciliation of the gaps that lie between languages and cultures, just as Arab socialism has been. The Moroccan philosopher Abdelkebir Khatibi has much to offer a reading of this knot of techniques, investments, and their politics. He advocates a variant of the dialectic that forgoes the more linear chuggings of developmental history, concentrating, as an alternative, on charged, largely asymmetrical interaction between geopolitical units that are proclaimed to be distinct. Syria in relation to communist Eu rope, Syria in contradistinction to World Trade Orga ni za tion (WTO) members. For Khatibi, any factor contributing to thought and action oppressive and liberationist alikecan function as an ingredient within what he calls double critique or an other thinking. In his own words, he calls for a plural thinking that does not reduce others (societies and individuals) to the sphere of its self-sufciency. To disappropriate itself from such a reduction is, for all thought, an incalculable prospect.17 Neither a mealymouthed apologist for the supremacy that inspiration can breed, nor someone who throws the baby out with the bathwater, Khatibi proposes plundering all cultures to hand for their revolutionary potency. At a time when many Syrians are locked in a bloody battle with the more heinous realities of a Far Left regime, but when overthrow (and of what, exactly?) may multiply their sacrices, this could prove sage advice. NFO lmmakers stand in a complicated position here: employed by the state, but often highly critical of it in the movies

105

Kay Dickinson they make. Directors Oussama Mohammad, Nidal al-Debs, Nabil al-Maleh, and Mohammad Malas have all publicly put their name to a petition that urges lmmakers in the world to contribute to stopping the killing [in Syria] by exposing and denouncing it, and by announcing their solidarity with the Syrian people and with their dreams of justice, equality and freedom.18 Certainly, Khatibi too speaks in the vocabulary of resistance, but a resistance that assimilates its oppressors ideas as not entirely tarnished and, furthermore, inextricable from the resistors makeupsomething that is very much the case with the NFOs sustained employment of the VGIK style. Khatibis double critique muddles the impossibly divided positions of leader and follower, oppressed and oppressor, colonizer and colonized as they scarify the curtailed possibilities of those who have been interpellated as the latter. Khatibi also militates against falling into Western globalization projects terms of opposition, inquiry, and facilitation. To confound and denounce the epistemologies of this divorce, signiers of each should be pushed to their limits, roughly restitched together, and even ironized. They then bring about the sorts of revealing geopolitical conjecture evident when, as in The Extras, the cinematic cousins of the Czech secret police break into a small Damascene apartment, or when Nights of the Jackal, via citation, quietly compares Israels invasion of Syria to American aggression toward Cuba. Decoupling stylistic concurrence from contentions over origins and possession in this climate allows for a more sustained investigation of how both communism and Arab socialism have aimed to protect culture from a particular business model, as well as, I contend, create what they deemed to be fair working conditions for its laborers. Khatibis approach can encourage such endeavors to continue, even if the current Syrian government is deposed. Certainly, the political and economic history that links Syria to Eastern Europe has not only enabled a transfer of aesthetics, and allowed Syria to swerve clear of much of the neoliberal strong-arming of the IMF and the World Bank, but has also intently reinforced the manufacturing ethics of Syrian cinema. As was pointed out, the NFO is an organ of the state, as its relatives in the socialist bloc had been. Consequently, there is a stabilizing, collaborative spirit implanted within NFO moviemaking. Samir Zikra wrote Dreams of the City for Mohammad Malas to direct; Abdullatif Abdulhamid provided the music for Oussama Mohammads Step by Step (1978); while Oussama Mohammad coauthored The Night (Mohammad Malas, 1992). Abdullatif Abdulhamid assumes a leading acting role in Stars in Broad Daylight (Oussama Mohammad, 1988), while Riad Shaya contributed as an assistant director. And so such lists go on, pointing clearly to the extent to which these lmmakers are a solid team, a set of employees of the same institution who have been awarded permanent salaries. Most movies elsewhere in the world, including Egypt, are made according to the post-Fordist principles of exible, precarious labor: a new team for each project and no guaranteed income

106

Syrian and Egyptian Cinema in between jobs. Upholding a completely different logic, the NFO provides long-term civil ser vice jobs for all those it hires. Today, the public sector employs 58 percent of university graduates in urban areas and 75 percent in the countryside, people attracted by the job security, enhanced retirement benets, and shorter working hours.19 Yet 60 percent of Syrias citizens are now under the age of twenty.20 When job-for-life assurance confronts population statistics like these, youth unemployment could well rise to Egyptian levels (87.1 percent for the fteen- to twenty-nine-year-old range), and this was one of the major catalysts for the recent Egyptian uprisings. For those on the payroll, the salaries are not particularly high, and denitely lower than one might expect in similar private-sector work, but the rewards are 20 percent above the average government wage and, most important, remain constant, regardless of production schedules.21 In this sense, the take-home might balance out as higher overall than the salaries to be found through commercial work, a trend mirrored across the Egyptian employment landscape too.22 Moreover, the health care, sick pay, and pension losses that have plagued casualized workers in Egypts private or informal sectors do not af ict the Syrian lmmakersfor the moment. Civil servants can expect to retire at sixty and are not supposed to work for more than forty-two hours per week.23 Likewise, Egyptian public-sector legislation demands overtime compensation on the ofcial day of rest and, otherwise, maximum shifts of eight hours that are rarely met by the average employee.24 Just to broaden this comparison outward, for freelancers in the British lm industry, seventy-two hours is more typical, a norm that sees them waiving their rights to protection under European labor law, matching beleaguered Egyptian textile workers in their temporal commitment.25 Syrias nancial support for movie production is not pro igate: about one million U.S. dollars per lm. 26 All the same, as director Riad Shaya attests: Work like mine would have been impossible without the existence of the National Film Orga nization, which provides all lmmakers with the chance to direct intellectually- and technically-distinguished material ... its very different from [the rest of] the cinema industry.27 What is peculiar to Syrian cinemas chosen modus operandi is that the lms look much more expensive. Although production is resource poor in many respects, it takes true advantage of how the civil ser vice model renders it rich in both time and human power. Tricky crowd scenes, complex tracking and crane shots, arduous chiaroscuro compositions, and exacting framing that are in no way necessary to plotsand stretch the time frame for shooting well beyond those of the average lmmake for a very lush body of work. The Night (Mohammad Malas, 1992) showcases some particularly challenging setups. A nocturnal air-raid scene, for example, contrapuntally plays off approaching horses, running children, incendiaries, and the general chaos

107

Kay Dickinson of war, all within lengthy, uid camera movements. Orchestrating and adequately rehearsing such a sequence, with highly unpredictable contributors, is an impressive achievement that would be incredibly expensive if everyone involved was paid by the hour. Resetting the scene, should anything have gone wrong midtake, would have consumed considerable time. There are quite a few such moments in The Night, made all the more impressive by the fact that the crew were working with a rickety old dolly that only had three rather than four wheels. Stars in Broad Daylight does not go easy on itself either, notably in the scene at the Lattakia docks, where characters wend their way through some elegantly choreographed heavy machinery. The wedding scene ropes in animals, children, and a setting sunstaging, again, demanding precision from notoriously uncontrollable participants. Verbal Letters (Abdullatif Abdulhamid, 1991) encases two dawn incidents, and Sacrices (Oussamma Mohammad, 2002) weaves in fastidious positioning of chickens, doves, cows, a snake, and a donkey. The opening sequence of A Land for a Stranger (Samir Zikra, 1988) parades the Ottoman elite, scores of costumed extras, a marching band, and a childrens choir through the streets of Aleppo. This list gives merely a cursory impression; similar determination blazes forth from practically every NFO endeavor. In a state where full employment is the goal and where, within the twenty-ve- to forty-ve-year-old cohort, male participation is close to 100 percent, such ambitious ventures become possible for a low-income cinema.28 Temporal and human resources are similarly milked in how cameras are wielded with the prolonged tracking shot, often through the help of a crane, which is a staple, for example, the riverbank chase sequence in Algae (Raymond Butros, 1991) or the lms many meanderings through the corridors of the courthouse. The Nights opening sequence is a long, single take that follows Wisal through her derelict house, with masonry falling at dened, punctuating moments (something that would have required a signicant rebuild had the process gone awry). Nights of the Jackals second scene commences with a dexterous four-minute, thirty-ve-second single take during which adroit camera movement and careful composition engross these farmers with the soil they work, sanctifying the labor undertaken by the second-largest portion of the Syrian population.29 As with the highly wrought staging of the set pieces, such camera work is onerous, especially if ones dolly is missing a wheel. Oussama Mohammad remarks on the uniqueness of the Syrian situation in this respect:
Syria might very well be the last place in this world where a lmmaker is given license to re-shoot a sequence until it is deemed right, where time and space for editing or sound mixing of an entire lm can be redone, without a reconguration of the lms overall budget. Furthermore Syria is perhaps the only place in this world where a young lmmaker without signicant prior experience is provided the opportunity to make a feature-length lm, regardless of the viability of the lm once it is released.30

108

Syrian and Egyptian Cinema Here, the stylistic imprint of modestly tenured public-sector lmmaking contrasts vividly with the rationalized and pressurized schedules of most other post-Fordist cinematic production. More usually, drawn-out manufacturing is considered the preserve of wealthier projects, yet this is not the case within the working practices of the NFO, where the high salaries of the freelance approach, designed to cushion fallow periods, do not intervene with these ambitions. NFO director Nidal al-Debs corroborates: We make the lms slowly and at an easy pace. We dont have a producer or a company harassing us, so we can make the lms we want to make.31 A pleasant, unrushed working environment is favored over maximized output, meaningfully reengaging the questions about thwarted prot expansion that are posed, as discussed below, by the narrow circulation of these movies. More sardonically, another NFO director, Mohammad Malas, exclaims: Time ... yes, we have all the time in the world.32 At Syrias completion rate of one and a half lms per year and with half of the men and 80 percent of the women on public-sector contracts clocking up less than forty-hour weeks,33 people of a certain get-up-and-go temperament are inclined to grow twitchy. There is a hefty backlog of scripts awaiting ofcial approval (which is more forgiving of critical perspectives than many would imagine, but still censorial) and dozens are never given the green light. Once they are, they stand patiently in line while other production schedules drag on. For all these reasons, more daring and dynamic directors, such as Omar Amiralay, transferred their loyalties to foreign production companies, and most NFO employees grumble that their oeuvre does not reach the screen regularly or quickly enough. Even the lms themselves shufe along with a ponderous pacing, the majority running beyond the hour and a half norm for features. Output and efciency, so much the darlings of exploitative employers elsewhere in the world, hold less currency here. While the lms may ask their viewers to contemplate a par ticu lar kind of temporality, their protraction might well stem from other desires. Samir Zikra entreats audiences to be diligent with the noteworthy length of our lms, their perplexity and burden of detail, for every single lm was either the rst, or second ... and even possibly the last ... every lm was made to say everything.34 In no realm is this more palpable than it is within the mise-en-scne. The complex sequences described above form part of this, but conspicuous precision is loaded into practically all the other shots too. There is signicance to every element of the lm, Nidal al-Debs insists, Nothing is there purely by coincidence and that is because we actually have the time to work on these details.35 Al Lajat provides excellent examples here; light on dialogue, it creates an evocative ambience through its captivation with visual textures and thoughtful, paint erly compositions. The quotient of daylight in these movies is lower than normal, with lmmakers preferring to experiment with nocturnal atmospheresagain, much harder to shoot and rarely necessitated by plots in any strict sense. The extensive play of light and shadow (often

109

Kay Dickinson through mashrabiyya window screens), the creation of ornate chiaroscuro rhythms, and the enjoyment of saturated colors distinguishes such lms as Dreams of the City, A Land for a Stranger, Verbal Messages, Stars in Broad Daylight, and, naturally, The Night and Nights of the Jackal. Deep focus (again, hard to achieve in moody lighting) lavishes attention on multiple planes within the frame throughout Malass and Mohammads movies. There is also a profound affection for mirrors and other reective surfaces in the lms of both these directors, as well as in Raymond Butross work. Sacrices brandishes the mirror motif because it is appropriate to its doubled characters, the three unnamed and often interchangeable sons in particular. Elsewhere, it is more an exuberant aesthetic ourish. One particularly mannerist scene in Stars in Broad Daylight is shot through a glass table, which ips the image upside down, then boldly fractures the action as the camera subtly shifts its angle (see gure 1). Certainly, all this betrays the time the lmmakers are afforded to experiment and push their equipment, capabilities, and Eastern Bloc training to the limit. These techniques simultaneously bring their labor resolutely to the fore. The mirrors (notoriously hard for sound crews to negotiate) become frames within frames, as do the various photography sessions in, say, The Night, and the video playback loop that is created for the wedding in Stars in Broad Daylight. Perhaps a dry comment on Syrian cinemas small audiences worldwide, there are rarely too many people watching the live feed on the television in the corner of the garden. Worse still, the television that emerges from the fathers military kit bag in Sacrices not only transmits images of one of the unnamed sons carrying a television (relaying

Figure 1. A scene from Stars in Broad Daylight (Oussama Mohammad, 1988), shot partially through a glass table that inverts a portion of the action

110

Syrian and Egyptian Cinema images of himself amid war-torn landscapes), but the appliance also strikes his sibling down with blindness. Less damagingly, Under the Ceilings (Nidal al-Debs, 2005) protagonist, Marwan, earns his living as a lmmaker, his footage bleeding across the narrative and prompting many of the movies ashbacks. Later into the story, Marwan makes a start on a tourist documentary about Syria. His nancial pragmatism triggers debates about the social position of the artist, ones that are also raised in relation to his friend Ahmad, a politically committed poet who rushes to the front in the Lebanese Civil War, leaving behind, unbeknownst to him, a pregnant Lina who is then obliged by her family, against her will, to abort the baby. These instances overwhelmingly induce, through their content and style, a sense of the weight and labor of representation; the intellectual and technical toil involved in producing such expressions is not allowed to escape the viewer. If the net result of so many lms the world over is the effacement of the effort required to create them, all in the name of uninterrupted entertainment, Syrian public-sector movies achieve something different: a respect for work and a contemplation of its politics within Arab socialism and, nowadays, Arab insurrection. Regardless of what is to be lost or gained in Syrias impending future, there is something striking and inspiring in these movies refusal of the casualized economy of lmmaking that is dominant almost everywhere else, where free labor (such as the internship) is an essential starting point and each year people in the industry die in accidents caused by extreme fatigue. In sharp relief sits Egypts Media Production City. In its last throes of public asset construction, the government built what was then known as Film City. Completed in 1973, the site encompasses fourteen studios, replete with complex permanent sets, workshops of all descriptions, color laboratories, postproduction suites, and a training college, as well as hotels and a sports club. Long evacuated from this space, however, is the costly protectionism of the Nasserite public sector. This absence greatly impacts the types of the cinema made here and throughout Egypt more generally. As in Syria, the work of the production team is never smoothed away, but the deviating end results stand for revealing differences in motivation. Musical scores are lush and all-pervading; zooms and mobile cameras proliferate when static shots would sufce; acting can be scene-stealing rather than mea sured. It is almost as if each lmmaking department would rather risk jeopardizing the overall coherence of the lm in order to overload their contribution with conspicuous displays of skill. The effect is one of an orchestra entirely composed of virtuosos, an aesthetic, it has to be noted, beloved of many fans of Egyptian cinema. The Embassy in the Building (Amr Arafa, 2005), for instance, is launched by a throng of spectacular swirling helicopter shots. Not to be outdone, the editing makes its presence felt through languorous dissolves rather than more-expected straight cuts. The Yacoubian Building (Marwan Hamed, 2006) presumes to start with a pastiche of grainy archival

111

Kay Dickinson documentary footage, but the dgety cameras, aerial shots, and drawn-out dissolves belie the generic markers that the lm professes to mimic at this moment. Even sequences that would appear fairly straightforward in script form take on a baroque ambience. The establishing scene in Birds of Darkness (Sherif Arafa, 1995) can function as one typical example out of possible hundreds here. Three characters are introduced within the con nes of the protagonists humble apartment. While the diegesis maintains a simple clarity at this point, the lighting creates elaborate shadows, sheen on pinpointed corners of the room and the actors faces, halos around their hair. Angles and levels interchange intoxicatingly; deep focus and frames within frames abound. On the face of it, these few minutes would not seem out of place in a Syrian movie, save for the fact that very few of the multiple elements of miseen-scne that have been underscored arise again as noteworthy plot hinges. They bear little, if any, symbolic import. The stylistic inclinations of this cinema instead come across as a deluge of calling cards from lmmaking personnel desperately trying to stand out in an extremely competitive marketplace. To add to this instability, Media Production City, where movies like this were shot, now lives life as a Special Economic Zone, exempting investors from tax and custom duty and enticing them with notoriously low wages, very little job security, and heavy, often coercive discouragement from unionization.36 Within Syrian accounting, monetary gain is less of a motivating factor than avoiding these forms of exploitation. In establishing a not-for-prot lm industry, Syria has also formulated trading practices that contradict the dogma and undermine the commercial dominance of the capitalist-inclined nations. Syrian cinemas value as an industry and as a set of texts dwells, additionally, in the highly apposite assertions it makes about how ideas and skills can circulate via its representational predilections and its modes of dissemination. No one expects these lms to recoup their outlay costs, although it is crucial to note that many have been extremely popular in their day, with The Leopard, The Extras, and Stars in Broad Daylight running for weeks throughout the country. Socialism organizes what these lms discuss and how they are manufactured, but it also dictates howif at allthey are seen. Only two or three are commercially available. Even in Syria, the DVD stores do not carry them. Sometimes even lmmakers do not possess copies of their own movies and the NFO is cagey about allowing study screenings. It is easier to source ofcial Ministry of Culture publications about these lms than it is to actually watch them. Nidal al-Debs explains: The National Film Orga nization owns the lms and does not care to make prints or distribute them. It nds no need for that. Why do it? They will simply be screened at festivals and that will be enough. Syrian cinema makes no prot anyway, so why strike more than one print?37 A fair few movies can be viewed on video at the National Library, but these are in ropy condition, often demagnetized or missing a reel in the transfer process. While a matrix of spectatorship once existed between various second world and nonaligned

112

Syrian and Egyptian Cinema nations, this is now drastically diminished, meaning that new Syrian lms are more likely to air only at the Damascus Film Festival, and then never again resurface in a theater. Positioned thus, they unequivocally refuse that cornerstone of capitalism: the maximization of prot. In practice, the unavailability of the movies demands that we detach from our standard, predictable attributions of value when it comes to cinema, be they commercially or socially focused, and confront the elements within life that evade such tidy conscriptions.38 Our attention can then be redirected from the value of the end product toward its mode of manufacture, which is perhaps a more promising site for political action, and denitely a motivating factor for political unrest. The dual scarcity and (in capitalistic terms) squander endemic to Syrian cinema merits much more academic contemplation than it has heretofore attracted. The oeuvre and its inaccessibility provide an object lesson in how impossible circulation can be for material that is not primarily commodied, that does not function hand in glove with the oligarchic structure of global lm distribution. The atypical character of Syrian cinema instead coaxes us toward urgent questions about the continuity of not-for-prot cinema and the political ideals it might harbor in a post- Soviet or, perhaps more optimistically, radically anti-neoliberal age. Bypassing the dominant networks of access in the name of socialism, this material becomes the property of everyone, but no one. Syrian ethics are all the more poignant, perhaps, at a time when the logic of prot has not brought forth noticeable nancial gains for Egyptian cinema. Industry insiders claim that privatized, commercial lm production loses out by the day to television and illegal copying, leading ofcial distributors to hawk their own DVDs outside rst-run theaters in the hope of gaining some of the prots lost to pirates.39 Although Egyptian movies are cheap to make (less than a couple million dollars per production), the returns are small and private investment scant. It therefore remains to be seen what will happen to the increasingly post-Fordist Egyptian lm industry. In the meantime, many workers are trying their luck in television and music videos instead. If the 2011 protests around Maspero (Egypts state media production headquarters near Tahrir Square) are testament to anything, it is a mistrust of all traditional media outlets. The governments response has been to swathe the building in razor wire and armed guards. And, in turn, homeless communities, displaced from their lodgings by landlords fearing their real estate will be expropriated by a new regime, have taken up residence in tents close to the fences to protest the lack of affordable housing in the capital.40 Amid all this, can the private sectorwithin housing or the mediatruly weigh in as a revolutionary alternative to state-run operations, especially given the devastating impact of divestiture upon the country? There are good reasons to be leery of how commercial corporations and foreign agencies alike have trumpeted their potential to change things for the better. Here it should be

113

Kay Dickinson noted that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has long been an avid supporter of the deregulation of Egyptian media as, all the while, the United States climbed upward to become Egypts most profitable import partner.41 Freedom of speech and trade are wont to get tangled here; liberalism with liberalization. In April 2011, Maspero employees once more voiced dissatisfaction with the supercial and cosmetic restructuring of their institutions proffered as a tokenistic response to the January and February uprisings. They also denounced the biased, progovernment coverage of the ensuing events. Among their demands, the media workers stipulated a minimum wage of $336.59.42 Fair working conditions remain a paramount concern, something not only latterly acknowledged by the IMF but also conspicuous to the massive Syrian state security sector. At the time of this writing, the military and secret police are themselves ghting for the survival of their jobs, at war with their own people to protect their employment security, even as it is insured by an unpopular dictatorship. Labor rights, as the Syrian National Film Organizations output insists, must remain center frame as these revolutions evolvewith respect to not just on the ground lived experiences but also their international afliations, their economics, and the values ascribed to their results. Kay Dickinson teaches in the Media and Communications Department of Goldsmiths College, University of London. She is the author of Off Key: When Film and Music Wont Work Together (Oxford University Press, 2008) and has published on Arab cinema in journals such as Screen, Camera Obscura, and Screening the Past. She has edited three anthologies, including, with Thomas Burkhalter and Benjamin Harbert, The Arab Avant-Garde (Wesleyan Press, forthcoming) and is currently nishing a second monograph entitled Arab Cinema Travels: Syria, Palestine, Dubai and Beyond.

Notes
1. International Monetary Fund, Mideast Unrest Shows Need to Consider Bigger Picture, www.imf.org/external/pubs /ft /survey/so/2011/car040811b.htm (accessed May 4, 2011). 2. Solidarity Center, Justice for All: The Struggle for Workers Rights in Egypt (Washington, DC: Solidarity Center, 2010), 14. 3. All of these statistics were gleaned from: Central Intelligence Agency, The World Fact Book: Egypt, www.cia.gov/library/publications /the-world-factbook/ geos /eg.html; and Central Intelligence Agency, The World Fact Book: Syria, www.cia .gov/library/publications /the -world-factbook /geos /sy.html (both accessed May 4, 2010). 4. Interview with Mohammad Malas, December 16, 2009. 5. Central Intelligence Agency, World Fact Book: Egypt and World Fact Book: Syria. 6. Bath Party, The Social Policy of the Party (Article 41, The Culture of the Society, Number 3), The Bath Party Constitution, www.baath-party.org /old /

114

Syrian and Egyptian Cinema

constitution6.htm, available in English with a different translation via: www. baath-party.org /eng /constitution6.htm (accessed December 27, 2010). Derek Hopwood, Syria, 19451986: Politics and Society (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988), 110111; Efraim Karsh, Soviet Policy towards Syria since 1970 (London: Macmillan, 1991), 54. Rasha Salti, Critical Nationals: The Paradoxes of Syrian Cinema, in Insights into Syrian Cinema: Essays and Conversations with Contemporary Filmmakers, ed. Rasha Salti (New York: AIC Film Editions/Rattapallax Press, 2006), 4. Interview with Nidal al-Debs, April 17, 2010. Interview with Mohammad Malas, December 16, 2009. Marsha Pripstein Posusney, Labor and the State in Egypt: Workers, Unions, and Economic Restructuring (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 7072. See Heba Handoussa, Crisis and Challenge: Prospects for the 1990s, in Employment and Structural Adjustment: Egypt in the 1990s, ed. Heba Handoussa and Gillian Potter (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1991), 4. Solidarity Center, Justice for All, 13; Handoussa, Crisis and Challenge, 4 5. Again, this volley of statistics derives from the Central Intelligence Agency, World Fact Book: Egypt and World Fact Book: Syria. Richard Pena, Foreword, in Insights into Syrian Cinema, 15. Mette Hjort, On the Plurality of Cinematic Transnationalism, in World Cinemas, Transnational Perspectives, ed. Nataa Durovicov and Kathleen Newman (London: Routledge, 2010), 17. Abdelkebir Khatibi, Maghreb Pluriel (Paris: Denol, 1983), 1718 (my translation). A Call from Syrian Filmmakers to Filmmakers Everywhere, Facebook, April 29, 2011, www. facebook.com /notes /syrian- lmmakers-call /a-call-from-syrian - lmmakers -to - lmmakers -everywhere - %D9 %86 %D8 %AF %D8 %A7 %D8 %A1- %D9 %85 %D9 %86 - %D8 %B3 %D9 %8A %D9 %86 %D9 %85 %D8 %A7 %D8 %A6 %D9 %8A %D9 %8A %D9 %86 - %D8 %B3 %D9 %88 %D8 %B1 %D9 %8A%D9 %8A%D9 %86 /126777020733985 (accessed July 25, 2011). Geri vensen and Pl Sletten, The Syrian Labor Market: Findings from the 2003 Unemployment Survey (Oslo, Norway: Fafo 2007), 30 31. Central Intelligence Agency, World Fact Book: Syria; Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, Arab Republic of Egypt: Labor Force Search Result for the Third Quarter, November 21, 2010, www.capmas.gov.eg/ news.aspx?nid = 503 & lang = 2 (accessed May 4, 2011). Lawrence Wright, Disillusioned, in Insights into Syrian Cinema, 46. In Egypt, the average government worker receives $8.58/day, other public sector employees $7.88, followed by the private sector mean of $5.45; Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, Arab Republic of Egypt: Labor Force Search Result. Emporiki Bank, Country Trading Pro les: Syria Labor Market, www. emporikitrade .com /uk /countries -trading -profiles /syria /labor -market (accessed December 22, 2010). Solidarity Center, Justice for All, 14; Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics Arab Republic of Egypt: Labor Force Search Result. Broadcasting, Entertainment, Cinematograph and Theatre Union, How Many Hours Are You Doing Today? www.bectu .org.uk /news /gen /ng0217.html (accessed December 28, 2010); Solidarity Center, Justice for All, 14. March du Film, Focus 2009: World Film Market Trends (Cannes: Festival de Cannes, 2009), 67.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20.

21. 22.

23. 24. 25. 26.

115

Kay Dickinson
27. Uncited quotation of Riad Shaya, sourced from Mahmud Qasim, Syrian Fiction Films (Damascus, Syria: Publications of the Ministry of Culture, 2003), 250. 28. vensen and Sletten, Syrian Labor Market, 94. 29. Central Intelligence Agency, World Fact Book: Syria. 30. Oussama Mohammad, Tea Is Coffee, Coffee Is Tea: Freedom in a Closed Room, in Insights into Syrian Cinema, 157. 31. Interview with Nidal al-Debs, April 17, 2010. 32. Interview with Mohammad Malas, December 16, 2009. 33. vensen and Sletten, Syrian Labor Market, 47. 34. Samir Zikra, A Cinema of Dreams and ... Bequest, in Insights into Syrian Cinema, 147148. 35. Interview with Nidal al-Debs, April 17, 2010. 36. Solidarity Center, Justice for All, 49. 37. Interview with Nidal al-Debs, April 17, 2010. 38. For a full examination of this idea and the repercussions of waste of this order, see Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy, Volume One (New York: Zone Books, 1991). 39. During a panel discussion entitled Variety-DIFF Spotlight: Arab Talent, Arab Producers, held at the Dubai International Film Festival on December 12, 2009, Sheikah Al-Zain Al- Sabah (Ea gle Vision Media Group), Georges Schoucair (About Productions), Rita Dagher (Yalla Productions), and Layaly Badr (ART) all concurred over these readings of the current state of affairs within Egyptian cinema. 40. Nicole Salazar, Egyptians Protest Evictions after Losing Their Homes Al Ahram Online, July 6, 2011, http://pulitzercenter.org /articles /egypt-homeless-protestevictions-housing-mubarak-landlord-tenant (accessed August 4, 2011). 41. As anecdotal evidence, the International Association of Media and Communication Research conference of 2006, which was held at the American University in Cairo (a private English medium institution), witnessed many papers by local academics strongly advocating the privatization of the media industries. Their talks were delivered from lecterns and using equipment supplied by USAID, as the obtrusive stickers on them revealed. Data on Egypts trading partners provided by Central Intelligence Agency, World Fact Book: Egypt. 42. Ekram Ibrahim, The Old Regime Still Rules Egypt State TV: Employees Protest, Al Ahram Online, April 4, 2011, http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent /1 /4 /9223 /Eg ypt /Media /The -old -reg ime -still -r ules -Eg ypt -state -T V -Employee.aspx (accessed May 7, 2011).

116